Ten & Levan

22. Twenty Two

LEVAN

"So you know where Coach lives?" I ask her as she speeds over a bumper. I go through a minor heart attack and get a hold of the dashboard while she giggles and hollers. Have I ever mentioned before that Ten is a very reckless driver? Well, she's so pathetic I wonder how she got through driving school.

She realizes that that my question remains unanswered so she turns to me, "Oh, this town is not the size of Asia Levan, of course I know where he lives! I used to be on the swim team not very long ago," she tells me, lifting a shoulder up.

"So, you're not on the swim team anymore?" I ask, relaxing in my seat when she slows down a bit.

"Nope," she answers uninterestedly and blasts the stereo. I guess that means I'm not entitled to investigate further, so I sit back and watch her as she head-bangs to the piano solo, and occasionally adds backing vocals to it.

Inside my head, I write about the girl who drives extremely recklessly, the girl who moves heedlessly to beats, the girl who sings like a canary. And even though they're only mental notes, I know they will stay glued to my memory, until I shove them on my pages, the pages that will create something revolutionary.

It doesn't even take us a full song to reach Coach Willow's house. Honestly, I'm fazed by how confident Ten is all the time. She marches up to the door and I watch her from inside the car as she animatedly chats with Coach Willow. Weirdly enough, Coach Willow is struggling with three kids around his legs. There are several balloons around his lawn, some food, and a few people sprinkled around.

I try to comprehend what Ten could tell him to get the keys to the school's pool. That sounds impossible to me. Why would a faculty member hand a student school keys? I jump in my seat when Coach goes back inside and Ten looks back at me, sitting confused as hell in the car. She winks and shows me a thumbs-up.

My eyes widen as the Coach returns with a set of keys and hands them to her. Ten says something to him with a very convincing facial expression before returning to the car. What in the stupidest damps of hell was that?

She settles into the driver's seat and throws the keys at me. Caught unaware, I fail to catch them and the keys fall somewhere near my feet. Ten starts to laugh in the Ten-est way possible; crazy and wild as I bend and rummage for the keys. I pick them up and put them on the dashboard.

"How did you do that?" I ask her, sounding as astonished as I am. It astonishes me further how I'm unintentionally dropping questions onto her. My curiosity is always flying high as a falcon when I'm with Ten. How did that happen and when?

"You're seriously not aware of my acting skills are you, Levan?" she asks as she backs the car onto the road. Then she pulls back on her shades smirks at me. "I told him that I lost my mom's credit card and it could've fallen near the pool because I went there to see Athena. But guess what? He got so concerned that he gave me keys to the whole school so I could search for it everywhere!" she tells me as we pull back onto the main road.

I watch her in silence, and I'm not hesitant to admit that I'm chickening out. This plan could end with us getting detention, or even rustication! I want to go back home. I want her to turn the car around but then she looks at my pale face and groans.

"Chill, I told him that it'd take me more than an hour to get the keys back because if I don't find the card at school, I'll have to go to the bank to temporarily shut the card," she explains. I don't answer, I'm still as freaked out as I was before. She lets her shoulders slouch as she shifts the gear. "You're not going to regret this, I swear, I won't let you get in trouble," she tells me and being a dumb idiot, I can't believe it that I believe her.